This weekend marks the start of Afro-Punk Weekend
at Bam Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn, a five-day airing of
films at the “crossroads of music and revolt,” says the
TheNew Yorker, with documentaries about
the Black Panthers and iconoclastic musicians like street
poet Gil Scott-Heron and jazz eccentric Sun Ra. At Brooklyn’s
Southpaw music venue, the Afro-punk party continues with
sets by influential scene-makers like Don Letts, a DJ
who introduced the sounds of dub and reggae to London
punk rockers in the ’70s. This weekend’s celebration of
the black influence on punk music and ethos may go largely
unheralded here in the Capital Region. But it’s a timely
coincidence, at least, that Broadcast Live will be kicking
off a monthly residency at Albany’s Red Square tomorrow
(Friday) night.

The four-piece Albany-based group met their latest member,
Seantel Chamberlain, a multi- instrumentalist who commutes
up from Brooklyn on weekends to practice with the band,
through an ad that she posted on the Web seeking similar-minded
musicians. It asked, in part: “Anyone seen the ‘Afro-Punk’
documentary?” The 2003 film, showing at BAM this weekend,
explores issues of racial identity in the American punk
scene and is the impetus behind the afro-punk weekend
events. Like some of their “afro-punk” forebears, Broadcast
Live meld elements of hip-hop and roots music with rock
and punk, and they share a dedication to social protest
through the performance of message-based music.

The three other members of Broadcast Live grew up in upstate
New York and first met through their work in Albany activist
groups like the Ironweed Collective. “For me, the music
is secondary and the primary thing is trying to change
society,” says lead vocalist Victorio Reyes, a poet who
has published a book of protest poetry called The Rebirth
of Krazy Horse. Lately, he has chosen to focus on
expressing himself through music. (Reyes also directs
Albany’s Social Justice Center.)

“Everywhere
you look, you see injustice,” Reyes says, touching upon
issues related to the war in Iraq, the criminal-justice
system that “locks up black people at an exorbitant rate
and works for people who have money and not for people
who don’t,” global warming, and threats to a woman’s right
to choose. “I want to address these issues, and music
is a vehicle to do that. We try to put out a message that’s
universal. On the road we met conservatives who were feeling
what we were saying, which surprised us. Our music appeals
to a wide range of people, and we want the message to
do that as well.”

Broadcast Live’s debut album, Underground, hit
No. 38 on the College Music Journal charts in May,
an impressive feat that landed the group in good company
with heralded hip-hop acts like Public Enemy, Ghostface
Killah and Gnarls Barkley. The album’s radio success may
owe something to the catchiness of tracks like “Underground,”
with a poignant chorus that backs up Reyes’ spoken meditations
on justice, and “Universal Thoughts,” a jazz-inflected
slow-burner in the vein of the groove-oriented, live-
instrumentation hip-hop of Philadelphia’s the Roots. (Both
songs can be downloaded at the band’s Web site, www.broadcastlive.org.)
Other tracks on the album, which the band describe as
“half hip-hop, half rock,” favor a volatile blend of guitar-thrash
and aggressive vocals that elicits comparisons to Rage
Against the Machine.

The music-industry experience of band member Jory Leanza
also came into play when Broadcast Live were shopping
the album to college radio. Leanza recently returned to
the Capital Region after several years living in New York
City, where he interned at SpinART and Jetset, two well-regarded
indie-rock record labels. That experience taught him the
importance of things like targeted radio and publicity
campaigns for fledgling bands. “Part of [that experience]
was seeing what can be achieved when you have a person
working full-time to help promote an album,” says Leanza,
who studied audio engineering at SUNY Purchase and did
virtually all of the recording and engineering for Underground.
“Every aspect of this album, we’ve done ourselves,” he
says. “We only hired someone to do publicity.”

The band’s next album is already under way, and the group
currently are working on “reformatting” their live show
to add more of an electronic element. Resident “musical
genius” is Gaetano Vaccaro, who plays all kinds of instruments,
including guitar, bass, keyboards and drums. “This guy
can play anything,” marvels Reyes. During their sets,
band members frequently swap off on instruments, depending
on what textures best suit the songs. (“My guitar playing
is more rock,” says Leanza.) The band’s melding of styles
and influences seems to work in part because their musical
differences are balanced out by a sort of commonality.
They cite rappers Common Sense and Mos Def as shared influences,
as well as politically minded folk rocker Ani DiFranco
and neo-soul singer Erykah Badu. “It’s like an unspoken
agreement about what is cheesy on the radio—and when to
switch the station,” says Chamberlain.

But the band take their musical differences in stride.
“You won’t catch me listening to Elliott Smith, but you’ll
catch him,” says Reyes, pointing to indie-rock fan Leanza.
“And you won’t catch me listening to the Dead,” says Leanza,
pointing an accusatory finger at Reyes.